Butter

Serpents and Snakes;
2012

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On their third album, Turbo Fruits offer ripping guitars and barroom aggression in service of throwback rock'n'roll. As the former Be Your Own Pet members told Rolling Stone, the album was recorded under the influence of Lil Wayne, 1970s soul, and Enya. Let that potpourri of sounds and influences simmer, because there's another thing you should know about Butter: Lyrically, it's an album of post-Garth Brooks country radio songs. There's no twang, over-glossy sentimentality, or patriotism-on-steroids flag waving. But while nothing here can be pegged as country sonically, their lyrics follow the same direct and literal "I'm telling a story and here's what happened beat-for-beat" frame of country radio at its most cliche. Which is not to knock an entire songwriting style-- there are obviously great songs that fit within that structure. These, however, are not great songs.

Here are the opening lines of "Don't Like to Fight": "Drinkin' Jack, getting lit/ Group of girls comin' up to us/ We could tell they was into it/ Saw a dude givin' dirty looks/ With his friend, talking shit/ Then a man came up to me and said/ 'Boy, you talkin' to the wrong chick.'" If that verse were an exception, the record could be saved, but predictability sets in hard. There's a song about gambling (called, ugh, "Gamble Tamble") that confidently overgeneralizes about "how the game is played." "Colt 45" is a song about shooting a man. There's a song about riding off on a motorcycle. Then we get to summer lovin', drinking, weed, cigarettes, and other carefree-but-edgy material. Their subject matter draws an easy comparison to another recent Nashville song, JEFF the Brotherhood's "Sixpack", but in this case, the good times aren't the celebratory focus-- they're props used to make egregious storytelling sound relatable, or worse, "badass."

What partially saves Turbo Fruits from their own lyrics is their knack for muscular riffs. Get past the words, and "Don't Like to Fight" is a rock'n'roll song worthy of Motörhead. It's got distorted guitars, muscle, and, yes, "the fight riff." Same deal with "Where the Stars Don't Shine", which was a ripping one-take live recording. They even manage to stick the landing on the instrumentation of their lighter fare, like the mellow jangle of "Gotta Get Along", the summertime balladry of "She Said Hello", and the swooning chorus on "Harley Dollar Bill$" (in case you thought there was only one awful song title). But to its detriment, it's easily the most hi-fi, slick-sounding album the band's put out, which strips away some of the ragged bite of their first two records. It's an intentional move; as the band's Jonas Stein told Billboard, "Man, we're ready to start being able to pay our bills. Our hope is that this record takes us to the beginning of that goal." Also worth noting: The band's polished new sound is housed on Kings of Leon's label.

With Butter, Turbo Fruits have offered a carefully honed caricature of themselves. They tell stories about bar fights, about gambling, about hitting the road, about drinking and smoking pot. And as if that picture still wasn't clear, right before the final track, you can hear producer Jim Eno (of Spoon) saying, "Yeah, we'll do a sober take tomorrow, guys." Because they're drunk! That's just how rebellious they are! They drink in the studio! But as Stein noted, all the "don't give a fuck" posturing wasn't reflected in the band's process: "I've never been more prepared for recording a record in my life. We had a no-mess, non-stop work ethic." Sadly, the hard work backfired. By aiming for so many different styles, settling for subpar-at-best lyrics, and trying to pay the bills with rock'n'roll, they never find a sound that's fully captivating or convincing.